How to become a quant at a bank in London
"Quant" is short for quantitative analyst. It is not one job. At a bank in London the word covers several jobs that share mathematics and programming and differ in almost everything else. The first step is to know which one an advert means.
The kinds of quant
- Desk quant, also called front office quant or strat. Sits with traders. Builds and maintains the models and tools the traders use to price products and manage their risk. Close to the market, with requests that arrive during the trading day.
- Model validation quant. Sits in the risk function. Tests the models that the desk quants build, independently of them, and writes up whether each model can be relied on.
- Risk quant. Builds the models that measure how much the bank could lose, across trading teams and across the whole bank.
- Quant developer. Writes and maintains the software the models run in. More engineering, less mathematics.
- Quant researcher. Looks for patterns in data that a trading strategy can use. More common at hedge funds and trading firms than at banks.
An advert rarely uses these exact labels. Read what the advert says the person does, and who they sit with. The briefing on each job here sets that out where the advert states it.
What adverts ask for
Each advert states its own requirements. These come up often.
- A quantitative degree. Mathematics, physics, statistics, engineering, computer science or similar. Many adverts for experienced roles ask for a master's degree or a doctorate. Internship and graduate adverts more often accept a first degree.
- Programming. Adverts often name Python and C++.
- Probability and statistics. Interviews test them directly, often with problems to solve on the spot.
- For pricing roles, stochastic calculus. The mathematics behind option pricing.
The routes in
- An internship in a quant team. Several banks run summer internships under names such as quantitative analytics, quantitative research or strats. It follows the same timetable as other summer internships. Applications open about a year ahead, and places are often filled as applications arrive.
- A graduate programme in the same team. Often filled in part by the interns of the summer before. See the summer internships and graduate jobs open now.
- After a master's degree or a doctorate. Banks hire from these courses directly, into roles that are advertised one at a time through the year.
- From technology or risk. People move from a developer or risk job into a quant team inside the same bank.
How the interviews differ
Quant interviews are more technical than other banking interviews. Expect probability puzzles, mental arithmetic, questions on statistics, and programming tasks, either at home or in front of the interviewer. Expect fewer questions about deals and markets than in an investment banking interview, and more about how you reason.
What it is not
A quant job at a bank is not the same as a job at a hedge fund or a trading firm, even under the same title. A bank's quants mostly serve the bank's clients and its traders. It is also not a data science job with a different name. The mathematics of pricing and risk is its own subject.